Now that that's out of the way, onto the actual review. I am about... 5-10 hours in I want to say, so I'm not far in.

Elevator Pitch: Pokemon meets Final Fantasy Nostalgia

In this game, you have the traditional turn based battles of older Final Fantasy games, with a few twists. We'll cover that later as part of the game's progression. To perform most actions, you need to spend Action Points. Attacking, Defending, and using Items does not spend AP. You generate a few points every turn (typically one, but more on that in a bit), and you use the AP to use your spells and special abilities like Libra (Scan the enemy for weakness) or Blizzard.

In battle, if you do specific things to different enemies, they become Imprismable (this game adores it's wordplay and/or cutesy way of saying things for some things). For some enemies, it's as simple as dealing damage to it, and others it could be something like "Land a critical hit". Once the criteria are met, the enemies will have a little aura around them. this aura can have three steps, from what I've seen. The brighter the aura, the better your odds are to Imprism them. Essentially, you catch them like a pokemon.

Now what do you do with these Imprismed monsters? I'm glad you ask! You stack them on top or below your two main characters!

Each creature and the Playable Characters have a Size associated to them, between Large (L) Medium (M) and Small (S). The Main Characters actually have two forms you can switch freely between outside of battle. Their human like form is L, and their Funko Forms are M sized. The two playable characters can be any mixture of LL, LM, ML, LL, depending on the monsters available to you, and your current loadout.

As your Mirages (The monsters) level up, they gain SP, for Skill points. You use these to level them up along their own little mini-Sphere Grid like advancement tree. There are Blank Spots, like the Sphere Grid, where you can slot in Skill Seeds to give your monster some new abilities, like Cure, Blizzard, or HP+, if you want something passive. Additionally, if you meet certain criteria for the Mirage (Level or item acquired), You can evolve them into a variant form, or a larger form. For example...

As a Mirage evolves, you can still advance along it's child form's grid, to get the passives and abilities. As you've noticed, the baby Fenrir was more than likely a S creature, while the adult one was an L, which means your stack alignment can change.

Your main characters don't earn skills themselves per se, nor do they have their own equipment. They have slots to equip jewels, that can be found in the world or from activating certain spaces on your Mirage's grids. Below level 20, each character can equip two of these jewels, and they bestow abilities onto them, same as they are on the Mirage grids. So, for example, I found a Defense+ jewel, and a Libra Jewel, which grants the character they're equipped to a bump to defense, and the Libra ability, no matter the stack alignment.

As far as I've seen, there are no spaces for upgraded spells, like Blizzara/Blizzaga. Instead, your stack's abilities, well, stack. If you have two creatures in a stack who know Blizzara, through grids or the Jewels, you can use Blizzara. Additionally, sometimes you can do things akin to the Dual-Techs from Chrono Trigger if the skills of your stack line up.

Another benefit of Stacking is that your character's HP and AP are combined. So instead of having 300 HP, 200 HP and 250 HP creatures, you can have one big one with a wide variety of skills and defenses. So if you have one character who's weakness is fire, and you slap on another who reflects fire, you may be able to nullify that one Mirage's weakness on your stack.

In battle, you can Unstack/Stack on your turn instead of taking an action. If you need to buy some time, you can unstack, or if you are Toppled (which stuns every character in the stack and unstacks you forcibly) you can restack. If you take a few moves that are trying to topple you, you can unstack and restack to regain your stability.

This game is legitimately funny at times, and it knows when someone is making tortured puns, as people react accordingly. Additionally, the entries for the Mirages are very clever and well written. My favorite entry so far has been the Copper Gnome (Which looks like it'll evolve into the giant Iron Giant, which reads thusly: “Composed almost entirely of copper, this metal with the mettle takes pride in his tough hide. It is incredibly satisfying to face one of these and shout, ‘Myeeah, see! You’ll never take me alive, copper!’ (If you got that reference, then congratulations! You are old!)”

The game has been fun and engaging thus far, but I can see where it could become a grind if you were looking to max out every Mirage's board. I streamed a bit of it the other day, so if interested, I can grab a bit of the video and link it here if you're curious as well.

As for now, I'm enjoying a return to Skyrim. This time as a male Wood Elf. (Female Nord on the first play through years ago)

I'm trying to integrate magic into it from the start this time, but so far I'm falling back on archery and melee fighting.

Also, booted up the 360 and loaded my old file. Put both characters in the same place (on the bridge right in front of Markarth) at the same time of day (at exactly 11 in the morning to be precise) and switched between the HDMI ports to see if I notice any difference between the two games in terms of graphics and yes, yes I do. The release looks noticeably better. The draw distance is further, for one, the edges of everything are far better defined, which is most noticeable when looking at the surface edges of the water. The weather and daylight effects look more realistic and even the character faces look better in the update. It's a nice facelift. Haven't tried the mods yet, but I've been looking through them.

As of April 1st, 2016,the first entry in my Gold & Steel fantasy series, As Fierce as Steel, is on sale. Visit www.thegoldandsteelsaga.com for more!

I have been glancing through a few different RPG books during my downtime at work. Most notably, Pathfinder (DnD 3.5-a-like), Technoir/Mechnoir (Rules-light cyberpunk game where you apply adjectvies to opponents [like distracted] instead of doing numerical damage), and Dungeon World (More Narrative based Fantasy RPG where you only roll 2 six-sided die for any given roll.)

The last Of Us Part II was just announced. I don't remember the last time a game announcement left me this excited. They didn't show a single bit of gameplay and I don't give a damn. I'm close to shaking with excitement, the same kind of feels I had when I was in the cinema waiting for The Force Awakens to start.

"My favourite spot is the one where I would pick him up for an aeroplane spin and rotate as many times as possible. He’d be so dizzy that he would try to pin the referee, and I’d count to three and he’d think that he won - Daniel Bryan

"My favourite spot is the one where I would pick him up for an aeroplane spin and rotate as many times as possible. He’d be so dizzy that he would try to pin the referee, and I’d count to three and he’d think that he won - Daniel Bryan

Also, I am excited for Part II. I honestly want to know who fucked over Ellie and what has happened in the time between this and Part I. And if you played part one and know the ending, you're probably wonder the same thing that I am, which is

SpoilerShow

Does Ellie find out what Joel did to everyone at Firefly HQ, basically giving the finger to the human race? If she did find out, how long before her and Joel got back in touch with each other? And if she hasn't found out, will she find out in this in this game and what will she do?